Century Motorsport converted its strong practice pace into a storming British GT Championship pole position as Jonathan Beeson and Charles Clark mastered the Donington Park circuit to shut out the threat from the pair of Barwell Motorsport Lamborghinis.
In GT4, its the title chasers who have claimed first blood at this penultimate round as a masterclass from Hadley Simpson allowed Innovation Racing to snatch pole position, ahead of championship leaders MK Racing who could only take fifth.
GT3
With title chases reaching boiling point with just two more races to go, that excitement didn’t quite spill over to this penultimate qualifying session of the season, instead the temperature was brought slowly up as Barwell Motorsport arguably swung the a slight advantage in their favour as they finished toward the top end of the timing screens.
But that, though, doesn’t tell the full story as it was actually somewhat of an upset to see the Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 Evo of Beeson and Clark at the top of the times. From the very start of the first Qualifying (Am and then Pro times are combined to set an overall time to set the grid), Beeson was keeping himself right in the mix, trading times with an Optimum car, but not the one that is leading the championship.
That’s because Marc Warren, in one of the two of the team’s McLaren 720S GT3 Evos, was powering his way clear and showing that he is getting ever more comfortable having stepped up from GT4 after winning the title last year. Setting an early benchmark of a 1m26.660sec, he got knocked down to second as Beeson took 0.150sec off the best time, but then Warren found yet more speed as he put in a 1m26.36sec to not only beat Beeson but a hard-charging Rob Collard who finished the Am-only session in second.
Swapped out for the Pro drivers, it was Ben Barnicoat who was initially fastest in the #77 Optimum machine that leads the championship, building on co-driver Morgan Tillbrook’s sixth fastest time.
But it didn’t take long for that to change as Hugo Cook went up to the top in his Huracán GT3 Evo2 that Collard qualified strongly, with Warren’s co-driver Jack Brown also pushing himself up to the sharp-end of the times.
None of them, though, accounted for Clark, who put in a 1m25.591sec to go into the lead with a combined time of 2m52.081sec, just 0.066sec quicker that Cook who, despite pushing as hard as he could, couldn’t find any more time in the Italian machine to try and snatch pole away.
Giving their title hopes a boost, Martin and Jarrod Waberski took third at the end of the session but were quote fortunate that Brown couldn’t find the extra 0.031sec he needed to vault up from fourth.
Whilst title leaders Barnicoat and Tillbrook did take fifth, and kept themselves toward the front of what is always a tricky field to overtake, the difference a row makes in the chaos of a rolling start and the relatively sharp Redgate right-hander that opens the lap at Donington could make all the difference.
Sixth went to Kevin Tse and the debuting Chris Lulham in the 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo and it’s a shame they couldn’t have got higher up the field as the latter’s 1m25.528sec was by far and away the fastest individual lap of Qualifying. That said, it does show they could be a force to be reckoned with tomorrow.
Seventh went the way of the second 2 Seas entry, this the three-pointed star of Aaron Walker and Charles Dawson, the latter subbing for Ian Loggie this weekend, whilst title contenders Orange Racing with JMH will perhaps be a bit disappointed to be lining up in eighth.
GT4
With how tight the standings are at the top of the GT4 championship, any advantage that can be gained at this stage of the season is one to be hung on to for dear life and that’s what Innovation Racing did. Just.
In reality, it probably could have been a lot smoother for Hadley Simpson and Thomas Holland. The former went out in the first 10-minute session and tore the place apart, setting the pace right from the start and improving lap after lap to eventually put in a time of 1m33.365sec to be just under six-tenths of a second faster than the rest of the field, giving Holland a great platform to build from and take a hard-fought pole position.
But they hadn’t counted on one person, Jack Mitchell in the Toro Verde GT Ginetta G56 GT4 Evo. Despite both being in Ginettas, Mitchell was extracting performance out of his machine that Holland wasn’t able to find, and as Mitchell put in a 1m32.964sec to create a combined time of 3m07.07sec, Holland needed to pull something special out of the bag.
Despite a few false dawns, with him and Mitchell swapping top spot for a time, Holland eventually found the pace he needed. A 1m33.643sec meant a combined time of 3m07.008sec, just 0.064sec quicker. Second might not have been what Mitchell truly wanted, but a front-row start and pole in the Pro-Am category will be some consolation.
With pole settled, it was all eyes on where the GT4 title leaders – MK Racing’s Will Orton and Jessica Hawkins – could qualify. That, eventually, was fifth as Orton found extra pace that seemingly resisted Hawkins’ best efforts to find it. But at 1.134sec down on combined times, and smack in the middle of the field come the start, and the leaders are going to have to do some work if they’re going to leave the East Midlands still on the top of the pile.
Back up at the sharper end of the field, and the best of the rest behind the runaway top two was the Paddock Motorsport McLaren Artura of Blake Angliss and Revie Lake, another crew who converted strong practice pace into a decent Qualifying result. Joining them on the second row is the Grange Racing with FSR Aston Martin Vantage of Dan Lavery and Darren Turner, just 0.061sec separating them.
Of note slightly further down the field, eighth was probably not what they wanted but was still a good result for British GT debutants Sam Branston and James Wareing in the second Innovation Ginetta. Making a guest appearance alongside their full-season GT Cup campaign, the youngsters stood up pretty well against full-season competition. Mitchell improves again! 1m32.964 extends gap to 0.251
The two-hour British GT Championship race gets underway at 13.30 local time.
